new Mail::Sender

Prepares a sender. This doesn't start any connection to the server. You have to use $Sender-Open> or $Sender-OpenMultipart> to start talking to the server.

The parameters are used in subsequent calls to $Sender-Open> and $Sender-OpenMultipart>. Each such call changes the saved variables. You can set smtp, from and other options here and then use the info in all messages.

Parameters

from

=> the sender's e-mail address

fake_from

=> the address that will be shown in headers.

If not specified we use the value of from.

replyto

=> the reply-to address

to

=> the recipient's address(es)

This parameter may be either a comma separated list of email addresses or a reference to a list of addresses.

fake_to

=> the recipient's address that will be shown in headers. If not specified we use the value of "to".

If the list of addresses you want to send your message to is long or if you do not want the recipients to see each other's address set the fake_to parameter to some informative, yet bogus, address or to the address of your mailing/distribution list.

cc

=> address(es) to send a copy (CC:) to

fake_cc

=> the address that will be shown in headers.

If not specified we use the value of "cc".

bcc

=> address(es) to send a copy (BCC: or blind carbon copy). these addresses will not be visible in the mail!

smtp

=> the IP or domain address of your SMTP (mail) server

This is the name of your LOCAL mail server, do NOT try to contact directly the adressee's mailserver! That would be slow and buggy, your script should only pass the messages to the nearest mail server and leave the rest to it. Keep in mind that the recipient's server may be down temporarily.

port

=> the TCP/IP port used form the connection. By default getservbyname('smtp', 'tcp')||25. You should only need to use this option if your mail server waits on a nonstandard port.

subject

=> the subject of the message

headers

=> the additional headers

You may use this parameter to add custom headers into the message. The parameter may be either a string containing the headers in the right format or a hash containing the headers and their values.

boundary

=> the message boundary

You usually do not have to change this, it might only come in handy if you need to attach a multipart mail created by Mail::Sender to your message as a single part. Even in that case any problems are unlikely.

multipart

=> the MIME subtype for the whole message (Mixed/Related/Alternative)

You may need to change this setting if you want to send a HTML body with some inline images, or if you want to post the message in plain text as well as HTML (alternative). See the examples at the end of the docs. You may also use the nickname "subtype".

ctype

=> the content type of a single part message or the body of the multipart one.

Please do not confuse these two. The 'multipart' parameter is used to specify the overall content type of a multipart message (for example a HTML document with inlined images) while ctype is an ordinary content type for a single part message or the body of a multipart message.

encoding

=> encoding of a single part message or the body of a multipart message.

If the text of the message contains some extended characters or very long lines you should use 'encoding => "Quoted-printable"' in the call to Open(), OpenMultipart(), MailMsg() or MailFile().

Keep in mind that if you use some encoding you should either use SendEnc() or encode the data yourself !

charset

=> the charset of the single part message or the body of the multipart one

client

=> the name of the client computer.

During the connection you send the mailserver your computer's name. By default Mail::Sender sends (gethostbyname 'localhost')[0]. If that is not the address you need, you can specify a different one.

priority

=> the message priority number

1 = highest, 2 = high, 3 = normal, 4 = low, 5 = lowest

confirm

=> whether you request reading or delivery confirmations and to what addresses:

"delivery" - only delivery, to the C<from> address
"reading" - only reading, to the C<from> address
"delivery, reading" - both confirmations, to the C<from> address
"delivery: my.other@address.com" - only delivery, to my.other@address.com
...

Keep in mind though that neither of those is guaranteed to work. Some servers/mail clients do not support this feature and some users/admins may have disabled it. So it's possible that your mail was delivered and read, but you won't get any confirmation!

This option contains data for SMTP extensions, for example it allows you to request delivery status notifications according to RFC1891.

NOTIFY - to specify the conditions under which a delivery status notification should be generated. Should be either "NEVER" or a comma separated list of "SUCCESS", "FAILURE" and "DELAY".

ORCPT - used to convey the "original" (sender-specified) recipient address

RET - to request that Delivery Status Notifications containing an indication of delivery failure either return the entire contents of a message or only the message headers. Must be either FULL or HDRS

ENVID - used to propagate an identifier for this message transmission envelope, which is also known to the sender and will, if present, be returned in any Delivery Status Notifications issued for this transmission

You do not need to worry about encoding the ORCPT or ENVID parameters.

If the SMTP server you connect to doesn't support this extension, the options will be ignored.

debug

=> "/path/to/debug/file.txt"

or

=> \*FILEHANDLE

or

=> $FH

All the conversation with the server will be logged to that file or handle. All lines in the file should end with CRLF (the Windows and Internet format). If even a single one of them does not, please let me know!

If you pass the path to the log file, Mail::Sender will overwrite it. If you want to append to the file, you have to open it yourself and pass the filehandle:

1 - only log the conversation with the server, skip all message data
2 - log the conversation and message headers
3 - log the conversation and the message and part headers
4 - log everything (default)

auth

the SMTP authentication protocol to use to login to the server currently the only ones supported are LOGIN, PLAIN, CRAM-MD5 and NTLM.

Some protocols have module dependencies. CRAM-MD5 depends on Digest::HMAC_MD5 and NTLM on Authen::NTLM.

You may add support for other authentication protocols yourself. See below.

authid

the username used to login to the server

authpwd

the password used to login to the server

authdomain

the domain name. Used optionaly by the NTLM authentication.

Other authentication protocols may use other options as well. They should all start with "auth" though.

Please see the authentication section bellow.

auth_encoded

If set to a true value the LOGIN authentication assumes the authid and authpwd is already base64 encoded.

TLS_allowed

If set to a true value Mail::Sender attempts to use LTS (SSL encrypted connection) whenever the server supports it and you have IO::Socket::SSL and Net::SSLeay.

The default value of ths option is TRUE! This means that if Mail::Server can send the data encrypted, it will.

TLS_required

If you set this option to a true value, the module will fail whenever it's unable to use TLS.

keepconnection

If set to a true value causes the Mail::Sender to keep the connection open for several messages. The connection will be closed if you call the Close() method with a true value or if you call Open, OpenMultipart, MailMsg or MailFile with the "smtp" parameter. This means that if you want the object to keep the connection you should pass the "smtp" either to "new Mail::Sender" or only to the first Open, OpenMultipart, MailMsg or MailFile!

skip_bad_recipients

If this option is set to false or not specified then Mail::Sender stops trying to send a message as soon as the first recipient's address fails. If it is set to a true value Mail::Sender skips the bad addresses and tries to send the message at least to the good ones. If all addresses are rejected by the server it reports an "All recipients were rejected" message.

If any addresses were skipped the $sender->{'skipped_recipients'} will be a reference to a hash containing the failed address and the server's response.

createmessageid

This option allows you to overwrite the function that generates the message IDs for the emails. The function gets the "pure" sender's address as it's only parameter and is supposed to return a string. See the MessageID subroutine in Mail::Sender.pm.

If you want to specify a message id you can also use the "messageid" parameter for the Open, OpenMultipart, MailMsg or MailFile methods.

METHODS

Open

Opens a new message. If some parameters are unspecified or empty, it uses the parameters passed to the "$Sender=new Mail::Sender(...)";

See new Mail::Sender for info about the parameters.

The only additional parameter that may not be specified directly in the new Mail::Sender is messageid. If you set this option then the message will be sent with this Message-ID, otherwise a new Message ID will be generated out of the sender's address, current date+time and a random number (or by the function you specified in the createmessageid option).

After the message is sent $sender->{messageid} will contain the Message-ID with which the message was sent.

MailMsg

Sends a message. If a mail in $sender is opened it gets closed and a new mail is created and sent. $sender is then closed. If some parameters are unspecified or empty, it uses the parameters passed to the "$Sender=new Mail::Sender(...)";

See new Mail::Sender for info about the parameters.

The module was made so that you could create an object initialized with all the necesary options and then send several messages without need to specify the SMTP server and others each time. If you need to send only one mail using MailMsg() or MailFile() you do not have to create a named object and then call the method. You may do it like this :

Sends one or more files by mail. If a mail in $sender is opened it gets closed and a new mail is created and sent. $sender is then closed. If some parameters are unspecified or empty, it uses the parameters passed to the "$Sender=new Mail::Sender(...)";

The file parameter may be a "filename", a "list, of, file, names" or a \@list_of_file_names.

see new Mail::Sender for info about the parameters.

Just keep in mind that parameters like ctype, charset and encoding will be used for the attached file, not the body of the message. If you want to specify those parameters for the body you have to use b_ctype, b_charset and b_encoding. Sorry.

Returns ref to the Mail::Sender object if successful.

Send

Send(@strings)

Prints the strings to the socket. Doesn't add any end-of-line characters. Doesn't encode the data! You should use \r\n as the end-of-line!

UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YOU SHOULD USE SendEnc() INSTEAD!

Returns the object if successful.

SendLine

SendLine(@strings)

Prints the strings to the socket. Adds the end-of-line character at the end. Doesn't encode the data! You should use \r\n as the end-of-line!

UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YOU SHOULD USE SendLineEnc() INSTEAD!

Returns the object if successful.

print

Alias to SendEnc().

Keep in mind that you can't write :

print $sender "...";

you have to use

$sender->print("...");

If you want to be able to print into the message as if it was a normal file handle take a look at GetHandle()

SendEnc

SendEnc(@strings)

Prints the strings to the socket. Doesn't add any end-of-line characters.

Encodes the text using the selected encoding (none/Base64/Quoted-printable)

Returns the object if successful.

SendLineEnc

SendLineEnc(@strings)

Prints the strings to the socket and adds the end-of-line character at the end. Encodes the text using the selected encoding (none/Base64/Quoted-printable).

Do NOT mix up /Send(Line)?(Ex)?/ and /Send(Line)?Enc/! SendEnc does some buffering necessary for correct Base64 encoding, and /Send(Ex)?/ is not aware of that!

Usage of /Send(Line)?(Ex)?/ in non xBIT parts not recommended. Using Send(encode_base64($string)) may work, but more likely it will not! In particular if you use several such to create one part, the data is very likely to get crippled.

Returns the object if successful.

SendEx

SendEx(@strings)

Prints the strings to the socket. Doesn't add any end-of-line characters. Changes all end-of-lines to \r\n. Doesn't encode the data!

UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YOU SHOULD USE SendEnc() INSTEAD!

Returns the object if successful.

SendLineEx

SendLineEx(@strings)

Prints the strings to the socket. Adds an end-of-line character at the end. Changes all end-of-lines to \r\n. Doesn't encode the data!

UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YOU SHOULD USE SendEnc() INSTEAD!

Body

Sends the head of the multipart message body. You can specify the charset and the encoding. Default is "US-ASCII","7BIT",'text/plain'.

If you pass undef or zero as the parameter, this function uses the default value:

Body(0,0,'text/html');

Returns the Mail::Sender object if successful, negative error code if not. You should NOT use this method in single part messages, that is, it works after OpenMultipart(), but has no meaning after Open()!

the content type (MIME type) of this part. May contain some other parameters, such as charset or name.

Defaults to "application/octet-stream".

encoding

the encoding used for this part of message. Eg. Base64, Uuencode, 7BIT ...

Defaults to "Base64".

disposition

This parts disposition. Eg: 'attachment; filename="send.pl"'. If you use 'attachment; filename=*' the * will be replaced by the respective names of the sent files.

Defaults to "attachment; filename=*". If you do not want to include this header use "" as the value.

file

The name of the file to send or a 'list, of, names' or a ['reference','to','a','list','of','filenames']. Each file will be sent as a separate part.

Please keep in mind that if you pass a string as this parameter the module will split it on commas! If your filenames may contain commas and you want to be sure they are sent correctly you have to use the reference to array format:

file => [ $filename],

content_id

The content id of the message part. Used in multipart/related.

Special values:
"*" => the name of the file
"#" => autoincremented number (starting from 0)

EndPart

If the $ctype is not present or evaluates to false, only the current SIMPLE part is closed! Don't do that unless you are really sure you know what you are doing.

It's best to always pass to the ->EndPart() the content type of the corresponding ->Part().

Close

$sender->Close;
$sender->Close(1);

Close and send the email message. If you pass a true value to the method the connection will be closed even if the "keepconnection" was specified. You should only keep the connection open if you plan to send another message immediately. And you should not keep it open for hundreds of emails even if you do send them all in a row.

This method should be called automatically when destructing the object, but you should not rely on it. If you want to be sure your message WAS processed by the SMTP server you SHOULD call Close() explicitely.

Returns the Mail::Sender object if successful, negative error code if not, zero if $sender was not connected at all. The zero usually means that the Open/OpenMultipart failed and you did not test its return value.

Cancel

$sender->Cancel;

Cancel an opened message.

SendFile and other methods may set $sender->{'error'}. In that case "undef $sender" calls $sender->Cancel not $sender->Close!!!

QueryAuthProtocols

Queryies the server (specified either in the default options for Mail::Sender, the "new Mail::Sender" command or as a parameter to this method for the authentication protocols it supports.

GetHandle

Returns a "filehandle" to which you can print the message or file to attach or whatever. The data you print to this handle will be encoded as necessary. Closing this handle closes either the message (for single part messages) or the part.

P.S.: There is a big difference between the handle stored in $sender->{'socket'} and the handle returned by this function ! If you print something to $sender->{'socket'} it will be sent to the server without any modifications, encoding, escaping, ... You should NOT touch the $sender->{'socket'} unless you really really know what you are doing.

FUNCTIONS

GuessCType

$ctype = GuessCType $filename, $filepath;

Guesses the content type based on the filename or the file contents. This function is used when you attach a file and do not specify the content type. It is not exported by default!

The builtin version uses the filename extension to guess the type. Currently there are only a few extensions defined, you may add other extensions this way:

$Mail::Sender::CTypes{'EXT'} = 'content/type';
...

The extension has to be in UPPERCASE and will be matched case sensitively.

The package now includes three addins improving the guesswork. If you "use" one of them in your script, it replaces the builtin GuessCType() subroutine with a better one:

Mail::Sender::CType::Win32
Win32 only, the content type is read from the registry
Mail::Sender::CType::Ext
any OS, a longer list of extensions from A. Guillaume
Mail::Sender::CType::LWP
any OS, uses LWP::MediaTypes::guess_media_type

ResetGMTdiff

ResetGMTdiff()

The module computes the local vs. GMT time difference to include in the timestamps added into the message headers. As the time difference may change due to summer savings time changes you may want to reset the time difference ocassionaly in long running programs.

CONFIG

If you create a file named Sender.config in the same directory where Sender.pm resides, this file will be "require"d as soon as you "use Mail::Sender" in your script. Of course the Sender.config MUST "return a true value", that is it has to be succesfully compiled and the last statement must return a true value. You may use this to forbide the use of Mail::Sender to some users.

You may define the default settings for new Mail::Sender objects and do a few more things.

The default options are stored in hash %Mail::Sender::default. You may use all the options you'd use in new, Open, OpenMultipart, MailMsg or MailFile.

The other options you may set here (or later of course) are $Mail::Sender::SITE_HEADERS, $Mail::Sender::NO_X_MAILER and $Mail::Sender::NO_DATE. (These are plain old scalar variables, there is no function or method for modifying them. Just set them to anything you need.)

The $Mail::Sender::SITE_HEADERS may contain headers that will be added to each mail message sent by this script, the $Mail::Sender::NO_X_MAILER disables the header item specifying that the message was sent by Mail::Sender and $Mail::Sender::NO_DATE turns off the Date: header generation.

!!! $Mail::Sender::SITE_HEADERS may NEVER end with \r\n !!!

If you want to set the $Mail::Sender::SITE_HEADERS for every script sent from your server without your users being able to change it you may use this hack:

You may even "install" your custom function that will be evaluated for each message just before contacting the server. You may change all the options from within as well as stop sending the message.

All you have to do is to create a function named SiteHook in Mail::Sender package. This function will get the Mail::Sender object as its first argument. If it returns a TRUE value the message is sent, if it returns FALSE the sending is canceled and the user gets "Site specific error" error message.

If you want to give some better error message you may do it like this :

Please note that at this stage the from address is in two different object properties.

$self->{'from'} is the address as it will appear in the mail, that is it may include the full name of the user or any other comment ( "Jan Krynicky <jenda@krynicky.cz>" for example), while the $self->{'fromaddr'} is realy just the email address per se and it will be used in conversation with the SMTP server. It must be without comments ("jenda@krynicky.cz" for example)!

Without write access to .../lib/Mail/Sender.pm or .../lib/Mail/Sender.config your users will then be unable to get rid of this header. Well ... everything is doable, if they are cheeky enough ... :-(

So if you take care of some site with virtual servers for several clients and implement some policy via SiteHook() or $Mail::Sender::SITE_HEADERS search the clients' scripts for "SiteHook" and "SITE_HEADERS" from time to time. To see who's cheating.

AUTHENTICATION

If you get a "Local user "xxx@yyy.com" unknown on host "zzz"" message it usually means that your mail server is set up to forbid mail relay. That is it only accepts messages to or from a local user. If you need to be able to send a message with both the sender's and recipient's address remote, you need to somehow authenticate to the server. You may need the help of the mail server's administrator to find out what username and password and/or what authentication protocol are you supposed to use.

There are many authentication protocols defined for ESTMP, Mail::Sender natively supports only PLAIN, LOGIN, CRAM-MD5 and NTLM (please see the docs for new Mail::Sender).

If you want to know what protocols are supported by your server you may get the list by this:

There is one more way to authenticate. Some servers want you to login by POP3 before you can send a message. You have to use Net::POP3 or Mail::POP3Client to do this.

Other protocols

It is possible to add new authentication protocols to Mail::Sender. All you have to do is to define a function Mail::Sender::Auth::PROTOCOL_NAME that will implement the login. The function gets one parameter ... the Mail::Sender object. It can access these properties:

$obj->{'socket'} : the socket to print to and read from
you may use the send_cmd() function to send a request
and read a response from the server
$obj->{'authid'} : the username specified in the new Mail::Sender,
Open or OpenMultipart call
$obj->{'authpwd'} : the password
$obj->{auth...} : all unknown parameters passed to the constructor or the mail
opening/creation methods are preserved in the object. If the protocol requires
any other options, please use names starting with "auth". Eg. "authdomain", ...
$obj->{'error'} : this should be set to a negative error number. Please use numbers
below -1000 for custom errors.
$obj->{'error_msg'} : this should be set to the error message
If the login fails you should
1) Set $Mail::Sender::Error to the error message
2) Set $obj->{'error_msg'} to the error message
2) Set $obj->{'error'} to a negative number
3) return a negative number
If it succeeds, please return "nothing" :
return;

You may specify the options either when creating the Mail::Sender object or later when you open a message. You may also set the default options when installing the module (See CONFIG section). This way the admin may set the SMTP server and even the authentication options and the users do not have to specify it again.

You should keep in mind that the way Mail::Sender reports failures depends on the 'on_errors'=> option. If you set it to 'die' it throws an exception, if you set it to undef or 'undef' it returns undef and otherwise it returns a negative error code!

Keep in mind please that different mail clients display messages differently. You may need to try several ways to create messages so that they appear the way you need. These two examples looked like I expected in Pegasus Email and MS Outlook.

If this doesn't work with your mail client, please let me know and we might find a way.

FAQ

Forwarding the messages created by Mail::Sender removes accents. Why?

The most likely colprit is missing or incorrect charset specified for the body or a part of the email. You should add something like

charset => 'iso-8859-1',
encoding => 'quoted-printable',

to the parameters passed to Open(), OpenMultipart(), MailMsg(), Body() or Part() or

b_charset => 'iso-8859-1',
b_encoding => 'quoted-printable',

to the parameters for MailFile().

If you use a different charset ('iso-8859-2', 'win-1250', ...) you will of course need to specify that charset. If you are not sure, try to send a mail with some other mail client and then look at the message/part headers.

Sometimes there is an equals sign at the end of an attached file when I open the email in Outlook. What's wrong?

Outlook is. It has (had) a bug in its quoted printable decoding routines. This problem happens only in quoted-printable encoded parts on multipart messages. And only if the data in that part do not end with a newline. (This is new in 0.8.08, in older versions it happened in all QP encoded parts.)

The problem is that an equals sign at the end of a line in a quoted printable encoded text means "ignore the newline". That is

fooo sdfg sdfg sdfh dfh =
dfsgdsfg

should be decoded as

fooo sdfg sdfg sdfh dfh dfsgdsfg

The problem is at the very end of a file. The part boundary (text separating different parts of a multipart message) has to start on a new line, if the attached file ends by a newline everything is cool. If it doesn't I need to add a newline and to denote that the newline is not part of the original file I add an equals:

dfgd dsfgh dfh dfh dfhdfhdfhdfgh
this is the last line.=
--message-boundary-146464--

Otherwise I'd add a newline at the end of the file. If you do not care about the newline and want to be sure Outlook doesn't add the equals to the file add

bypass_outlook_bug => 1

parameter to new Mail::Sender or Open/OpenMultipart.

WARNING

DO NOT mix Open(Multipart)|Send(Line)(Ex)|Close with MailMsg or MailFile. Both Mail(Msg/File) close any Open-ed mail. Do not try this:

GOTCHAS

Local user "someone@somewhere.com" doesn't exist

"Thanks" to spammers mail servers usually do not allow just anyone to post a message through them. Most often they require that either the sender or the recipient is local to the server

Mail::Sendmail works, Mail::Sender doesn't

If you are able to connect to the mail server and scripts using Mail::Sendmail work, but Mail::Sender fails with "connect() failed", please review the settings in /etc/services. The port for SMTP should be 25.

$/ and $\

If you change the $/ ($RS, $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR) or $\ ($ORS, $OUTPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR) or $, ($OFS, $OUTPUT_FIELD_SEPARATOR) Mail::Sender may stop working! Keep in mind that those variables are global and therefore they change the behaviour of <> and print everywhere. And since the SMTP is a plain text protocol if you change the notion of lines you can break it.

If you have to fiddle with $/, $\ or $, do it in the smallest possible block of code and local()ize the change!

BUGS

The problem with multiline responses from some SMTP servers (namely qmail) is solved. At last.

SEE ALSO

MIME::Lite, MIME::Entity, Mail::Sendmail, Mail::Mailer, ...

There are lots of mail related modules on CPAN, with different capabilities and interfaces. You have to find the right one yourself :-)

DISCLAIMER

This module is based on SendMail.pm Version : 1.21 that appeared in Perl-Win32-Users@activeware.com mailing list. I don't remember the name of the poster and it's not mentioned in the script. Thank you mr. undef.

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. There is only one additional condition, you may NOT use this module for SPAMing! NEVER! (see http://spam.abuse.net/ for definition)